ROCKING THE BOAT

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Pundits who attempt to establish the genesis of the Tea Party movement often point to an impassioned on-air outburst in February 2009 by CNBC's Rick Santelli on the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, when the journalist decried the Obama administration's proposal to bail out homeowners who had fallen behind on their mortgages. In a literal sense, that's accurate. Santelli did use his rant to call for a “Chicago Tea Party,” the first time the label had been attached to the burgeoning resistance to a growing federal government.

If one wishes, however, to capture the moment when the spirit animating the Tea Party was loosed, you'd have to look back five months earlier, to September 2008. That was when two-thirds of House Republicans rebelled against a president of their own party and voted against the bill authorizing TARP, the emergency financial assistance package backed by the Bush administration in the wake of the catastrophic fallout from the financial crisis.

Throughout Bush's presidency, there was a substantial subset of conservatives and libertarians who found themselves repeatedly biting their tongues over the 43rd president's policies, especially on the domestic front. They were uncomfortable with the expanded federal role in education under No Child Left Behind. Their objections to the Medicare prescription drug benefit had more to do with the creation of another massive entitlement than the fact that it was unfunded. They were queasy as a Republican White House and members of the GOP in Congress seemed to abandon whatever principled objections they once had to increased government spending and regulation.

After holding back for years, the dam finally broke when Bush – by then deeply unpopular and with only a few months left in office – proposed the Trouble Asset Relief Program. The idea of a $700 billion blank check for the federal government to distribute throughout the private economy galled them. But many were even more exercised by the president's declaration that he had “abandoned free-market principles to save the free-market system.”

As we take stock of the Tea Party five years after its genesis, that origin story is important to keep in mind, because it underscores a point that too often eludes the commentariat: The Tea Party was not formed in opposition to Barack Obama. If anything, it was formed in opposition to George W. Bush and big-government conservatism. That Bush's successor was an unapologetic statist and a liberal Democrat catalyzed the movement and focused its energies; it was not, however, necessary for its creation.

Armchair analysts often define tea partyers in terms of their policy views – and there's something to that, as we will see. Just as important in understanding the movement, however, is their theory of politics. The Tea Party defines itself in opposition to what its members often term “the Republican Establishment.” It's a somewhat ill-defined phrase, and its use has become so promiscuous as to render it almost meaningless. At root, however, it's a catchall term for Republicans who value political power more than they value conservative principles.

Understand this mindset, and you understand the Tea Party. Why have they mounted primary challenges to incumbent Republicans even when the result is placing the seat in Democratic hands? Because they'd rather take the chance of losing an election with someone who will cleave to conservative principles than having a guaranteed victory with someone they can't trust.

Why did they embrace the Hail Mary strategy of attempting to defund Obamacare even when it was a virtual certainty that it would fail? Because they suspected criticism from fellow Republicans had more to do with not wanting to rock the boat than with legitimate tactical disagreements. And there's nothing tea partyers hate more than business as usual.

It all may sound a touch paranoid – and, truth be told, it is at times. Yet, as the cliché goes, just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you. There's not exactly a shortage of examples of the Republican Party disregarding its conservative base over the past few decades. In addition to the apostasies of the younger Bush, there was his father's famous violation of his “read my lips, no new taxes” pledge.

And the history of Republican presidential contests over the past 50 years is a story of repeated conservative failures. In the past five decades, only two nominees – Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan – would likely meet with the approval of modern tea partyers.

Such outcomes, however, don't necessarily imply a conspiracy – they may simply reveal a lack of political strength for the conservative base. Either way, the Tea Party has made it its mission to become the dominant force in the GOP.

CHECK THE SCORECARD

After five years, how have they done?

It's a mixed bag. There's no question that the Tea Party can boast of deep success in reorienting the GOP towards a limited-government perspective. Look at the talking points or read the campaign books of today's crop of Republican candidates, and you'll see a host of issues that their Bush-era predecessors never would have entertained: abolishing Cabinet departments, auditing the Federal Reserve, embracing a flat tax. Even the idea of repealing the 17th Amendment (which shifted the election of U.S. senators from state legislatures to voters) has developed a modest base of support.

The Tea Party has also been successful in quickly developing prominent leaders at the federal level. Freshman senators such as Rand Paul, Ted Cruz and Mike Lee have all developed national profiles – and each of them came to office after triumphing over more-moderate Republican opponents in a primary.

It's key to note, however, the limits of the movement's electoral success. Paul, Cruz and Lee each hail from states – Kentucky, Texas and Utah, respectively – that are deeply conservative. In those places, there's not much electoral liability in giving voters an option to the right of the status quo. Just as often, however, similar strategies have cost the GOP otherwise winnable seats in more moderate locales.

In 2010, Tea Party candidates Sharron Angle and Ken Buck lost competitive races in the swing states of Nevada and Colorado, respectively. Christine O'Donnell – a Tea Party candidate who spent most of her campaign trying to explain away admissions that she had once dabbled in witchcraft – was blown out in deep-blue Delaware. The Republican she beat in the primary – moderate Mike Castle, who was serving as the state's at-large congressman and had previously been its governor – would have been favored to win had he been the GOP nominee.

ENDS VS. MEANS

Lurking underneath those electoral outcomes is a metaphor for both the strengths and weaknesses of the Tea Party. There is no question that they have altered the ends that the Republican Party strives for – and done so for the better. Gone is the ideological confusion of the Bush years. The GOP is now, without question, a limited-government party; and one that has restored communion with the libertarian wing it spent the better part of a decade ignoring, at best, or holding in outright contempt at worst.

The right ends, however, are of little value without the right means – and that's where the Tea Party has struggled. Putting up fervent limited-government conservatives in strongly Republican states has proved to be a winning strategy. Doing so in less-accommodating ideological climes, however, is a recipe for failure. Building political coalitions is a matter of addition, not subtraction. That means bending to the realities of moderate or liberal jurisdictions and nominating Republican candidates suitable to their ideological palate. In those places, compromise is a precondition of success.

The same is true when it comes to public policy. The push to defund Obamacare, for instance, split Republicans and unified Democrats. This is always and everywhere a recipe for failure. Political parties win when they flip that equation – unifying their side and dividing the opposition.

Whether the Tea Party can learn from these experiences is an open question. The movement's greatest strengths are also often its greatest weaknesses. What makes the Tea Party vibrant is that it represents a clear, consistent ideology. What makes it vulnerable is a tendency to think of incrementalism as a betrayal of that ideology.

The road to success begins with a difficult question – how can they balance their loyalty to principles with the compromise necessitated by the American political process? How they answer that question will determine what we're saying about the Tea Party five years from now.

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